Jerry Seinfeld is right: what happened to flat-out funny TV comedy?
Is the TV sitcom over, lost in a fug of contemporary anxieties about social justice? This week Jerry Seinfeld, the 70-year-old star and co-creator of the great Nineties sitcom Seinfeld, has put his hat in the “things ain’t what they used to be” ring.
There is, he told The New Yorker, a saddening lack of good TV comedy on offer. Back in the late 20th century you would get home, exhausted from another day of living without smartphones or Spotify, and switch on a real sitcom with real laughs. Cheers. M*A*S*H. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He didn’t mention his own show — a “comedy about nothing” that was actually a densely plotted comedy of then-contemporary manners — but he could have done.
In Britain, he might have added: Only Fools and Horses. Blackadder. Dad’s Army. Father Ted. Fawlty Towers. Stuff almost everyone could enjoy. “You just expected, ‘There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.’ Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
Jerry Seinfeld, left, with Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards
There has been the usual uproar on social media. Seinfeld has lost it. Seinfeld never had it. Et cetera. I think he’s got the beginnings of a point, although not entirely for the reasons he suggests.
The left is undoubtedly more censorious than it was in Seinfeld’s prime. Which is why the old-timer Larry David, who co-created Seinfeld, turned more teasingly right-wing in his final seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm. And why Ricky Gervais, once a hero to all with The Office, does stand-up routines that mock woke rigidity.
Seinfeld remains one of the great comedy craftsmen. He agonises over every comma of his stand-up set. He knows the impact of a good quote. He’s got a new Netflix film to promote, Unfrosted (not warmly received in this newspaper), so these were not his first alluringly outspoken comments of his publicity blitz. The previous week he was telling GQ magazine how the film industry was dead. “When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it.” No more. The action has moved to entertainment on demand, siloed in different streaming services.
And this is the more compelling argument for the decline of mass-appeal comedy. The culture industry is now aimed at big niches more than mass markets. Comedy, like everything else, doesn’t get big ratings any more. But sitcoms and sketch shows remain expensive. So broadcasters don’t invest in them. So any sitcom or sketch show that appears and doesn’t score big is more proof that the form is dead. Get your quick-hit humour on YouTube instead.
Which leaves sitcoms only having a reason to exist if they are classy and edgy and get good reviews and upscale viewers. Yes, Baby Reindeer is a critical and popular hit on Netflix, but while it’s about and by a comedian, it’s not really comedy. Fleabag was marvellous, but was hardly a sitcom and certainly not family entertainment. Look at some of the most acclaimed comedies of the past few years: The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Hacks, Detectorists. Great shows, but half-hour comedy dramas really.
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Is the flat-out-funny sitcom a relic, then, a niche interest like jazz, autograph hunting or social democracy? Actually, things are starting to change. Last month Richard Osman, talking on The Rest Is Entertainment, his biweekly podcast with Marina Hyde, introduced the idea of “hard comedy”. This, he said, is what commissioners are hunting for. Hard comedy being accessible comedy, properly popular comedy — funny comedy you might say. The surprisingly persistent international success of Friends has been taken as proof that, actually, if you do it well there is a massive audience for, y’know, funny stuff.
Bring it on, I say — and look at the commissioners’ websites and you will see they are, or trying to. “We have a gap where Derry Girls, Friday Night Dinner and The Inbetweeners have all sat over the last ten years,” the Channel 4 Comedy website page announces to potential contributors. “Bring us your big, returnable ideas. Broad, popular, big ratings, story of the week, out and out comedy-comedies. Ideas that can be seen and tick over successfully on streaming.”
At the BBC? Same story. The BBC Comedy “creative brief” talks about “broad” shows: “accessible, relatable comedies that have the potential to reach a large audience. Think: Two Doors Down, Black Ops, The Outlaws and Motherland.” It defines “family” comedy as much the same, “but pre-watershed and often shared across multiple generations. Think: Ghosts.” It mentions “reputational” shows that “win awards, get good reviews or reach our underserved audiences. Think: Dreaming Whilst Black, Mandy, Inside No 9, and Alma’s Not Normal.” It concludes, however, that this last kind of show gets offered to them all the time. “We are most keen to hear ideas which may be considered broad or family.”
So, in a year or two will families be back gathered round the box, second screen tucked away, laughing together at 2020s archetypes as they once did at dodgy market traders, wartime amateur soldiers or feckless Irish priests? Let’s hope so. We could do with a laugh.
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